Binging On Behavioral Analytics

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Lately, it seems everyone is binge watching something. Whether you are churning through Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, or something else it can be fun. In fact, according to Deloitte, 73% of people have binge watched and the average time they spend doing so is five hours at a clip. The bad news - other studies have found the more you binge watch, the lower quality of sleep, greater symptoms of insomnia and higher fatigue. The way people behave is interesting and perhaps that is one reason behavior analytics are being used more in banking and the broader corporate world.

Many information security experts point out that one of the biggest security vulnerabilities is the human employee. Hence, behavior analytics are becoming the life blood of information security and especially within banking.

Understanding where risks are surfacing in the technology layers of your bank typically requires a vast amount of data. Crunching all of this as you include a focus on users can help prevent malicious or more innocent insider threats. By determining whether employee activities are consistent with normal behavior, your teams can more readily correct issues before they get too large.

Research firm IDC predicts that in 2017, behavioral analytics across compliance, fraud, cyber detection and prevention will be installed at 15% of banks. This will help banks avoid losses, regulatory fines and sanctions. In fact, banks have already made a big start in the fraud space, with FICO having introduced behavioral analytics in the early 1990s. It now is used to analyze 67% of the world's payment card transactions for fraud.

Behavioral analytics has also become a prominent area for cybersecurity defense, with many vendors emerging in this space. Behavior analytics in cybersecurity is defined as using software tools to detect patterns of data transmissions in a network that are out of the norm. The theory is that the analytics tool would detect the anomaly and alert managers, who would stop the unusual behavior or breach.

While the market for user behavior analytics is still relatively nascent, it is quickly gaining steam according to 451 Research. Adding artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies eventually will help banks take a more proactive approach to corporate defense.

It's no secret that community banks are spending more for cybersecurity, but CIOs will continue to struggle to balance cyber investments against managing risks to the core business.

Behavioral analytics is also increasing as phishing scams become more convincing and connect with their intended targets more. Behavioral analytics relies upon anomaly detection to identify patterns that do not conform to those statistically expected. In the context of security, such anomalies might represent a variety of threats. These include intrusions to networks by an impostor, unwarranted escalation of privileges, and transmission of sensitive corporate information across irregular channels.

Perhaps it is time to start exploring the benefits of behavioral analytics. It could be yet another step to help keep your bank safe without breaking your IT budget.

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